Lesson: 34
18/IX/2011
- Lessons time: dual - 0.8h, solo - none
- Total time: 29.1h (1.1h solo)
- Location: EGAD
- Aircraft: G-BNKR (C152)
With holidays over, I decided to give the "new" club a visit. With the new CFI, a lot of positive change took place. For instance: late Thursdays. So, as you can imagine - I decided to stop by one Thursday after work to see how it looks like. Boy I was for a surprise. To skip through the boring stuff, in the end - I decided to book a lesson with a instructor that I've seen since the start of my aviation journey, but never flew with. Ray sticks in your memory. And he is a very nice guy. After Today I can also honestly say that he is one good instructor.
So anyway, got there earlier - just in case no one recognised my face. Went for tea with few instructors beforehand, just to listen to the latest rumours.
After that I went on to check the good old Bonker. Still the same old beast. Someone told me that it looks quite old and scary inside, but I kind of like it. There are some new aircraft coming to the club soon, in the same price range - so I guess I'll have a chance to fly something brand new - and compare the experience. For the time being, bonker is fine. It takes all the hammering studes put it through without a whine.
Anyway, flying. Of course, it was given that no one will send me solo on first day after 4 months, and with the cross wind.
So I did the first circuit. Ray started to ask me some very sensible questions. One - on the down-wind (which I called cross wind by mistake, what a monkey) - do you think - if the donkey quit - you'd be able to glide back to the runway. Of course not, I was miles away. Very good point.
So next circuits were more sort of elliptical in shape.
Ray was very happy about me doing the level off every 500 ft on climb-out (i.e. before the turn into crosswind). I would also start a turn at around 800 ft downwind. Made sense, and it meant that I could indeed at least reach the dry land - should the rubber band break.
The wind started to pick up closer to the ground, and I have failed to compensate using enough rudder. So the next touch and go was kind of scary. But I handled it.
So for the next one, Ray decided to show me what to do with rudder. I guess it was one of those things that goes away after a while. Something to remember, that even tho flying sticks in memory like riding a bicycle, there are some things you wouldn't do as good once you are out of practice.
So for the next challenge, mr Ray decided to cover the ASI and 'the ball' with chart. I was forced to look outside, and only use my attitude and judgement to set the speed. I was scared at first, and amazed later at how well I did. I was off by 5-10 kts, but always over the speed, not under. Which is of course important. Well, at least seems safer - given that we have tarmac runways, that are long enough for small biz jet. If it was grass short strip it would have been a different ball.
So that was a bit of fun and challenge. Ray said, that if the cross wind didn't get so bad - he would have let me have one solo circuit. So I guess, overall - I wasn't so bad.
I was also amazed how easy the radio has become.
At the end, the complementary gps track. No height tho - because go-flying went absent on all of us, and I have no where to convert the GPX tracks so that I would get the height coloured track. Oh well.
- Route: T/O RWY 04 right hand circuits, maaasive cross winds, wind-shears, and of course 1 go around .
- Milestones: It's been a while.
- Exercises covered: circuits.
- Weather: quite a gust, cross wind. Typical nice day :)
